44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 13, 2022 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. I also want to thank the Bloc Québécois for all the rigorous work they did on Bill C-18 and for their support of the bill.
As I have said many times, this bill is not a panacea or a goal in itself, but it is an extremely important tool that essentially calls on the dominant platforms, the ones that control a substantial portion of the market and advertising revenues, to contribute to the production of local content. Many news media outlets, including radio stations, newspapers and television networks, have shut down. The bill needs to ensure that platforms also contribute to the growth of local journalism, especially smaller media outlets in the various provinces and regions, including of course in my colleague's riding. That is why Bill C-18 is so important.
It is not the only one, since the government has brought forward several other measures to support a free and independent press, including the payroll tax credit and other programs.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the seriousness of the work of the NDP on this very important bill. I also want to thank him for the support. What he just said is extremely important. It is why we put that in the conditions. I will repeat what I read in my speech.
The agreements must support local independent news businesses in Canada.
To get an exemption, a platform, like Google or Facebook for example, needs to also have agreements with local media outlets that are independent. Yes, they will have deals with the big players, smaller players and regional players, but also with the independent players. We put this as a condition because it is fundamental to making sure those small news outlets thrive. We need them in our regions. They are disappearing. We need to put a stop to that. It is why this bill is so important.
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Mr. Speaker, something that the legislation would actually do is require that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, to publish a list of digital news intermediaries and news businesses that are eligible under the online news act.
Throughout the legislation, it talks about the CRTC's role with the overall principle and objective of ensuring that we have a higher sense of fairness in regard to revenue and how that revenue could be distributed. Hopefully, the industry is able to do it in a consensual manner. If not, there are ways we can ensure it does.
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Mr. Speaker, we know that 450 news outlets in Canada have closed since 2008. At least one-third of Canadian journalism jobs have disappeared. The member spoke a bit about this. We know it is vital that Bill C-18 includes small-sized media outlets. However, we are hearing from unions, like CUPE national, for example, raising concerns of layoffs. When the NDP proposed the amendment in clause 29 to require news organizations to publish a list of the number of journalists employed, the member's party voted against it.
Can the member explain to the chamber today why that is?
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Mr. Speaker, I suspect there is widespread support in recognizing that tech giants, whether it is Google, YouTube or Facebook, which really dominates the social media industry, get billions of dollars in revenue every year, and a lot of their sourcing comes from news agencies that are finding things difficult. There is a sense of unfairness there. This legislation would ensure there is a higher sense of fairness. The creators and news agencies are reporting on the news, and their content is being utilized by these giants, which are not paying anything for it.
Do the member and the Conservative Party believe that Google, Facebook and other giant conglomerates have a responsibility to pay for some of the creative journalism we are seeing in our communities?
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Mr. Speaker, you can see how hard it is to rein in our young colleagues' enthusiasm.
I thank him for his impromptu member's statement and I agree wholeheartedly. That is precisely the purpose of Bill C‑18, specifically, to ensure that these news stories, which make local residents proud of what is happening in their communities, can continue to receive the prominence they deserve and have space to evolve in our increasingly digital world.
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- Dec/13/22 2:48:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, if I understand correctly, the minister is saying that CBC News is reporting fake news. That is what it sounds like to me. It is being reported in the news this week that 59,000 cases were transferred to 779 employees who no longer work there. On top of that, we are also learning that CBC News warned of problems at the beginning of the year. However, the minister never said anything about it. There was never a word from him about anything.
Meanwhile, we get so many requests in our offices. People have no idea what is going on. Our immigration system is deeply flawed. Can the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship at least apologize to the people who have been waiting, in many cases, for years?
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Madam Speaker, has the member ever shared a link to a news story on Facebook or Twitter? If he has, why should Facebook have to pay the Toronto Star, or wherever the link was from, because the member shared it?
Has he ever shared a link on Twitter or Facebook? Should Facebook or Twitter have to pay a fee to the newspaper whose link he shared?
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to speak to Bill C-18, in part because there has been so much misinformation and disinformation being spread by the government, including the minister and the NDP, about the bill.
First, let us talk about the situation that brought us the need for the bill.
Across Canada, local small media organizations have been disappearing. Many of them have gone out of business, in the hundreds. Even before the pandemic they were in disarray. The idea behind the bill was to try to help these local small media organizations.
When we look at clause 4 of Bill C-18, which I will read because it is important and it is the only clause I voted for, it states:
The purpose of this Act is to regulate digital news intermediaries with a view to enhancing fairness in the Canadian digital news marketplace and contributing to its sustainability, including the sustainability of independent local news businesses.
That is the intent of the bill, and I am very much in favour of that. A lot of the local media outlets, like the ones in Sarnia—Lambton, are going out of business. Where else are we going to get the local news content that we all want to have?
The idea was to somehow create a fund that would then be shared among local media outlets. The problem started there, because then the idea was to make tech giants, the digital network intermediaries like Facebook, also known as Meta, and Google pay every time somebody shared a news link.
The Supreme Court in 2011 ruled that there was no value in sharing a link. In fact, the whole purpose of the Internet is the freedom to share information that is of interest to us and others and there should not be a value put on it. As soon as we start to put a value on it, for example, that we will only charge a value and give to the news intermediaries, it is a very short step to say that everybody who shares that is sharing something of value and why should it not happen with all of them. That was the problematic premise of the bill, which just got worse. The definitions with respect to who is included or excluded are being made by the government.
Freedom of the media is a fundamental principle in Canada. That means we cannot have the government determine who is in and who is out, who can participate in this and who cannot, yet that is exactly what has happened in Bill C-18.
To make it worse, there are so many vague definitions in the bill, which have been criticized by critics, people who are copyright experts and many others. They have said that a lot of these things will need to be clarified. The government's response was not to worry, that they should trust it because it would define them in regulations, with no parliamentary oversight. That is a very dangerous situation.
The reality is that Canadians do not trust the government. Polls of late show that only 22% of Canadians have trust in government or politicians. That is four out of five who do not trust the government to do what is right, and I am in the four out of five. There was no willingness to take amendments that would have clarified the definitions and put some of these things down, with the oversight of the different parties at committee. That was the first thing.
Then the Parliamentary Budget Officer did a study that said that with the money that Facebook and Google would be giving and the approximate volume of the different links that would be shared, there would be a certain pot of money to be shared. The Parliamentary Budget Officer said it was $350 million and the department officials said it was more like $150 million. Therefore, it is somewhere between $150 million and $350 million.
However, the most interesting finding was that the Parliamentary Budget Officer said that 75% of the money would go to Bell Media, Telus and the CBC. The whole point of this bill is to try to help the local small media outlets. If Bell, Telus and the CBC walk off with the lion's share, that leaves very little money left to share among the little ones.
Why should we be giving any more money to the CBC? The government already gives billions of dollars to the CBC. In fact, it just figured out that the CBC should not have to go looking for advertising money and, really, should be publicly funded for another $400 million.
There is CBC, which is likely to get the lion's share, already being funded and now taking away from the very individuals we want to benefit in this bill. It makes absolutely no sense.
In terms of trying to keep the government from excluding the voices it does not want to hear, we tried to bring some clarity to the definitions. At the beginning, it said there needed to be at least two journalists. Other than being recognized in the Income Tax Act, there was not a lot of clarity brought. Some of the amendments were brought to keep out foreign interference, but there were many ethnic and smaller outlets that were mom-and-pop shops, where maybe the owner was the blogger.
We were very happy to support that concept, but unfortunately it was tangled in with a bunch of things we could not support.
The government has the ability to fix that. It has since excluded any organization that does not have more than two journalists, and I think that is a problem.
The other thing is that the Governor in Council will get to decide everything, and then the CRTC, once it has decided who is eligible to play in the game, is going to provide the oversight for this process. When the CRTC officials came to committee, I asked if they had a lot of experience with regulating oversight of digital news intermediaries. They fully confessed that no, they have no experience in that area. It is ridiculous for the government to want to decide who can win and lose and play in the game and then put the CRTC, which already said it does not know anything about managing this, in charge. This is just a recipe for disaster.
Facebook, Meta and Google have been very clear that they want to help small media outlets in this country and would be very happy to donate that $350-million pot and let a consortium of small news media outlets decide among themselves how best to split it up so that there is sustainability. There needs to be fairness.
We introduced amendments at committee to include indigenous voices. I think there are other ethnic voices in our country that have been excluded by the definitions, but if we took the money and had a panel that was looking at the local small media outlets, it could be fair in making sure there was an equitable dispersion.
Instead, Bell Media, which already shut down a whole bunch of small media outlets, is going to get part of that, 75% of it. What do we think giving it more money is going to do? It is going to continue to shut down small media outlets, and it is not going to achieve the purpose of the bill.
There were concerns expressed after Australia implemented a similar legislative model. Facebook at that time threatened to shut down content. It said it did not want to participate in this. It did not want the government regulating the Internet and regulating free speech. There was a shutdown, and then there was a renegotiation and changes were made.
When we recommended that those changes be brought to the bill and that we could learn from what was problematic in the Australian experience, we learned that it was about this phrase “undue preference”, which meant it was going to be illegal in Bill C-18 for those platforms to do what they do, which is using algorithms to upvote and downvote content. They try to keep hate speech down and things that are misinformation down, and they try to upvote things that people are interested in, things that are popular, so they need to be allowed to do that.
That was another problem we saw with this bill.
Then there are the privacy concerns of sharing information. The CRTC has a broad ability to ask people for any information it needs in order to verify that they are eligible, and then there are going to be arbitrators involved, who are not necessarily bound by the same codes of confidentiality. I have a privacy concern about that.
When it comes right down to it, we did everything we could to recommend that the government abandon this bill and instead work with the big tech giants to get a fund, get it together and divide it up among the local media outlets, so that the people who really need it will get that help.
However, here we are, in the middle of the Christmas season. Love did come down at Christmas, and not just for everyone in general but for me specifically. I am very happy to announce that I got married and so, with that, I wish everybody a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.
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Madam Speaker, unfortunately, no, I do not believe the bill would do what its purpose intends.
Let us be clear: Facebook, Meta and Google have publicly said they are willing to donate funds that could be split up among smaller local news media. That would involve no government bureaucracy. It would mean the government is not picking who can be in and out. There would be nobody saying something is a violation of freedom of the press or freedom of the Internet. That could still happen, and my recommendation to the government is that it ought to happen.
That being said, I certainly do not think Bill C-18 in its current form would do anything more than give the nests of CBC, Bell and Rogers more money.
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Madam Speaker, Edmonton was the place I had my start in journalism in 1998 at the Edmonton Journal, and at the time there were several newspapers in town, along with several radio stations and several TV stations, which were all producing news for the city of Edmonton. Over the past 20 years, the media landscape has really shrunk. There is not the same number of journalists out on the street reporting the news.
This is because of what the Public Policy Forum calls “vampire economics”. Facebook and Google take 85% of the funding that used to go to news for advertising. That now goes to Facebook and Google, and at the same time, they take the content produced by journalists and distribute it for free. What we have learned is that, yes, Facebook and Google are making deals with these outlets ahead of legislation similar to Bill C-18. They did it in Australia. They are doing it now in the U.S., and in Europe they are also considering similar legislation.
These are deals that are completely without government influence. They are business deals between organizations and Facebook or Google, so there is no government interference, and what we have learned is that Facebook and Google probably would not make these deals, if the legislation were not already on the table.
I am wondering if the member opposite agrees that it is a huge threat to our democracy to see this demise of journalism in our—
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Madam Speaker, my riding has seven local media outlets: Le Clairon, Le Courrier, Boom FM, Journal Mobiles, Radio-Acton, La Voix de l'Est, and La Pensée. They all do an outstanding job.
It is, however, abundantly clear that local and regional news are dying. Philanthropy and subscriptions are no longer enough. We need to help them.
In the current context, we need them. We need them because local and regional news outlets showcase talent, happenings and current events.
In the current context, with a free market dominated by digital giants, that is no longer enough. Digital giants must contribute a portion of their profits to help local and regional media.
Why does our colleague still disagree?
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Madam Speaker, this is another twist. This world is full of competition, and big companies are there because they have all the tools needed to be a presence.
Most of us in the House and beyond use the services of Facebook, Google and others to advertise what we do and what we stand for, so I do not think there is anything in the bill to tell us where the money is going to go and whether the money is going to go to support those small local news outlets the hon. member mentioned. That is why the bill is about nothing. It is meaningless. It is about nothing, and it is unnecessary.
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Madam Speaker, I am looking at Bill C-18, which is what we are reviewing today. One of the more shocking and troubling things about the bill is the government knows full well that this is not going to the people who need the money the most. In doing research for this speech, it came up over and over again that it was not going to my local news media. It was not targeted to them at all. Here we have CBC, Rogers and Bell getting most of the money. What is with that, and why did the Liberals not fix it?
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.
As this is very likely the last time I will rise to speak in 2022, I want to offer my condolences to the friends and family of the Hon. Jim Carr. I also want to wish everyone happy holidays, including you, Madam Speaker.
That being said, my colleague spoke a lot about the importance of local media. As I said before, representatives from the local newspapers La Voix de l'Est, La Pensée de Bagot and the Journal de Chambly, and even Radio M105, a great community radio station that is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, all came to see me to say that legislation was required and action absolutely needed to be taken.
The Liberals have invested a lot in ads on GAFAM and other platforms, and the Conservatives are pushing for a form of libertarianism on social media and with GAFAM. This goes against the importance of news reporting that respects a code and aligns with what journalism should be. Journalism is about providing information on local current events and reporting real news, not disinformation.
What does my colleague think about the importance of local media for democracy and for a healthy news ecosystem?
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Madam Speaker, the member is absolutely right. We talk about our local news media or our local papers, and maybe someone is fortunate enough to have a local TV station. The local news media that is present in Quebec is obviously going to provide the local news and perspective for Quebec, and the local news media in Saskatchewan is going to provide our perspective, but when we see a bill like this, it is not going to boost and enrich the ability of the organizations to do what they are going to do. We are hearing the government say it is absolutely going to do that, but the reality is we always see that it is our small towns and our rural and remote communities that have people who have a diminished voice in this country. They are the ones who are always the first to lose out. They are the first ones to be eliminated because of decisions like this that are made.
We need to support and promote our small-town papers and our small-town TV and radio stations. The bill would not do that.
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Madam Speaker, Le Clairon, Le Courrier de Saint-Hyacinthe, Boom FM, Journal Mobiles, Radio Acton, La Voix de l'Est, La Pensée de Bagot, NousTV and TVME are the local and regional media in my riding. I want to pay tribute to them. They do incredible work. Some of them are community media. However, they are only scraping by. Not everything is rosy.
We need them. They are essential for bringing us the latest news on events, local culture, artists, sports teams, what elected officials are up to. We need them because these stories does not make national broadcasts and the national news. That is why we need information about what is happening in the area and the region.
What are we now telling them? We are telling them to give up, to let the digital giants dominate this market, crush them, suck them dry. Well, I am saying no. That would be suicide.
Why does my colleague not understand this?
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Uqaqtittiji, Jeanette Ageson, with the Independent Online News Publishers of Canada, is quoted as saying that, with these amendments, small newsrooms that are operated by start-up entrepreneurial journalists would have been left out of opportunities to negotiate with web giants.
Can the member explain the discrepancy between the Independent Online News Publishers of Canada and how he understands this bill to be?
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Madam Speaker, I cannot put it better than the Independent Online News Publishers of Canada, which said:
Any government intervention into the free press, however well-intentioned, must be carefully considered, as there is a potential to warp outcomes, stifle innovation, determine winners and losers, and compromise journalistic independence.
In its current form, Bill C-18...fails this test.
I agree.
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